Menu

Category Archives: Animal camouflage

Whether hiding from Lions on the Serengeti or dodging bullets on the battlefield, avoiding unwanted eyes should be high up on your priorities!

In nature, animals have evolved different strategies to achieve concealment. By resembling the appearance of its surroundings (“background matching”) an individual can reduce its chance of being detected. However, background matching has its limitations since many potential prey have characteristic features, such as edges, that predators can employ in the detection process. A 100-year old theory speculated that background matching camouflage can benefit from a complementary camouflage strategy of using highly contrasting patterns to disrupt the ability of predators to detect these characteristic features.

Disruptive markings are widely thought to obscure animals’ outlines and breakup their edges, making boundary and overall shape less recognisable to would-be predators. Whilst many animals, such as zebras, tigers and cuttlefish, have been proposed to have disruptive camouflage—not to mention a host of military uniforms and equipment—to date there is no evidence show that objects with disruptive patterns are actually harder to recognise once encountered, a key prediction of this concept.

Here at Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, we set out to test experimentally if disruptive camouflage truly misleads humans when searching for animals. Using humans hunting on computer screens (Fig. 1a) we looked at the survivorship of artificial moth targets with varying numbers of edge patches. Further, we used eye tracking technology to measure target recognisability (Fig. 1b). Targets that were looked at for longer were assumed to be harder to recognise.
It was predicted that if number of edge patches improves camouflage by disruptive coloration, then target moths with more edge intersecting patches should have a high survivorship due to impaired recognition.

Indeed, we found that targets with more edge intersecting patches took longer to be discovered. This cannot be explained due to background matching alone because this was even the case for edge markings that were dissimilar from the background. Crucially, targets with more edge patches took longer to be recognised and were overlooked more often.

Through this novel use of eye-tracking technology, the study provides key evidence to support the hypothesis that disruptive coloration can achieve camouflage by masking an animals’ characteristic outline, thereby impairing recognition. It is hoped that these novel methods will ultimately provide a means to test if seemingly ‘disruptive’ markings, such as those of zebras, tigers or even soldiers uniforms function to disrupt recognition (Fig. 2).

This research will enable us to better understand—and design—camouflage patterns, as well as appreciate the beauty of animals colorations, that we sometimes don’t always see.

The idea of a Three Minute Thesis (TMT) is to quickly and clearly communicate the rationale and importance for ones research. Simply put, can you condense the message of your research into a three-minute ‘elevator pitch’.

As part of my Ph.D. in Tom Sherratt’s lab, at Carlton University, I presented my work as a three-minute thesis. It was a really challenging and enjoyable activity… made all the more worthwhile when I was selected as a finalist for Carleton’s competition.